


Fathers and Sons

by icarus_chained



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Abandonment, Anger, Awkward Conversations, Bastard Sons, Cultural Differences, Discovery, Fae & Fairies, Family, Family Reunions, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Illegitimacy, Kings & Queens, Magic-Users, Mother-Son Relationship, Post-Canon, Princes & Princesses, Reconciliation, Revelations, Servants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-02
Updated: 2015-10-02
Packaged: 2018-04-24 10:59:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4917016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Childermass discovers that he is the Raven King's bastard. Being his mother's son and of certain opinions, this conversation does not entirely go as John Uskglass might have expected. Fortunately, it is not John Uskglass doing the talking. It's William of Lanchester, bearing uneasy news once again, and with some weary aplomb. He always knew his king's romances would one day get them in trouble, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fathers and Sons

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt on the kinkmeme, about the theory that Childermass is the Raven King's bastard. I feel sort of weird writing it, since I also _ship_ Uskglass/Childermass a little bit, but I thought I'd give it a go.

It was early afternoon in the relatively comfortable tap-room of a Yorkshire inn when a man came over and sat himself down at John Childermass' table. He did not do so impolitely. He tapped the battered wood of the tabletop with a questioning finger first, and waited for the occupant's nod before seating himself. Nonetheless, it was clear that he was not here for lack of room elsewhere. He had come with a purpose in mind, though he seemed content to wait for his ale to be delivered before coming to it. Or, for that matter, introducing himself.

Childermass studied him idly across his pipe bowl as they waited. He did not know the man, nor did he think he had seen him before. He was an older gentleman, with a pleasant but somewhat careworn face, and an indefinable air of authority about him. It was in the way he moved through the world, not with arrogance, but with a calm expectation that whatever should come upon him would be dealt with. A man with a purpose indeed, and perhaps not one that pleased him much. He looked weary, and mayhap a little apprehensive. Well then. That boded well, didn't it? Childermass resisted the urge to pull his cards from his pocket. Later. If things should come to it, later for that.

"Well met, John Childermass," the man said at last, after a pewter tankard had been set in front of him and he had taken a healthy and fortifying draught of it. He had something of an odd accent, one that Childermass had the impression he had heard before, though he could not quite remember where or when. He held out his hand across the table, and Childermass took it after only a moment of thought. "I apologise for coming upon you at your leisure. I have heard that it is rare enough these days. I am afraid I could not wait, however."

Childermass blinked at him mildly, and smiled a little around his pipe stem. "'Tis rare enough, aye," he said quietly. "It is not quite so rare that I cannot take a few moments to listen to man with a problem, should he need it." He raised a querying eyebrow, and was answered by a wry sort of an expression. Problems, aye. "What can I do for you, Mr ...?"

"Lanchester," the man told him, not without a certain self-deprecation. Childermass raised an eyebrow again, but forbore to comment. "You'll forgive me, Mr Childermass. I'm not entirely sure how to approach this. It is a rather delicate matter, and not one that I think will have been raised with you before. It is of a ... personal nature, you see."

Childermass' second eyebrow went up to join his first. A personal matter? That was ... unusual, to say the least. There were few enough people left in this realm who might have 'personal matters' with him, and he could not see why anyone should approach him with personal matters belonging to anyone _else_ either. He had developed a reputation as many things since magic had returned and certain magicians had vanished, but he had not thought that a repairer of personal problems was one of them. 

"I'm not sure I know what you mean, sir," he said softly, lowering his pipe and feeling the fingers of his other hand twitch faintly towards his pocket. "What manner of personal matter?"

Lanchester grimaced faintly. He cast his eyes upwards a little, though whether he was praying or remonstrating or simply trying to get his thoughts in order was a little hard to tell. He took the tankard up again, and had himself another draught of ale to ease things along. Childermass blinked at him. What the blind bloody hell was the matter with the man? Lanchester had the definite look of a man made to be the bearer of bad news, but there simply wasn't any bad news of a 'personal nature' that might still apply to Childermass. Not unless someone had up and decided to arrest him all of a sudden, anyway. Which was not entirely beyond the bounds of possibility, but they'd hardly send only one man if that were the case.

"All right," the other man said at last, having apparently come to a decision. He brought his eyes down out of the inn's rafters and directed them back across the table once again, a cautious but determined expression on his face. "It is said that you are a man of good sense and much experience, Mr Childermass. I wonder if I might ... lay a situation before you, and ask your advice upon it? I am acting on another's behalf, and I find myself uncertain how to proceed. I hoped you might perhaps help me."

Childermass stared at him, not exactly enlightened by this, but he spread his hands in wordless agreement. With luck, at least, it might win him something to work with. This little encounter was becoming rather more mysterious than he should like so far. 

"I represent a man," Lanchester told him, with a faint crease of his face that spoke of fondness and exasperation in equal measure. Childermass bit his lip, finding it something of a familiar expression. "A powerful man, one who has been absent from England for some time. He has sent me here in search of his son. His, ah, his _illegitimate_ son. Who, I believe, has no idea that his father still exists, nor that his father has any idea who he is. He has had no reason to. I am tasked to find that son, and to approach him on the matter of reuniting with his father." He paused, while Childermass went very still across from him, and grimaced faintly once again. "You understand now why I said it was a delicate matter, I think. This is not a task I have ever been set to before, Mr Childermass. I find myself somewhat at a loss, I'm afraid."

Childermass tamped out his pipe and laid it carefully aside. He wasn't sure where this was going any longer, but he was beginning to think that he didn't like it. He linked his hands together on the tabletop in front of him, and looked Lanchester in the eye. 

"You want help finding this son, is that it?" he asked mildly. "Some spell of finding, perhaps?"

Lanchester looked at him sadly, and shook his head. "No," he answered quietly. "I believe I have found the son already. My master found him first, in fact. He has known for some time who and where his son is. It was more the question of ... how to approach him that I hoped you might help me answer."

Childermass allowed his expression to grow a shade more forbidding. "That is an odd question to ask a man you do not know," he said, but something cold had begun to take hold in his gut. There was a sort of tired knowingness in Lanchester's eyes, and Childermass had the feeling very abruptly that the man in fact knew a great deal more of him than he should have done. Enough, at least, to have an idea of Childermass' own origins. Enough to have an idea why this might be a question Childermass was qualified to give opinion on. 

Childermass did not like that thought. It was not because of the knowledge itself. He had never been ashamed of his origins, though he had of course been cautious of whose company he revealed them in. Certain people, particularly of higher class, tended to have notions about such things. No, it was not that. It was that Lanchester had somehow divined those origins without his knowledge, and then sought to use them, to come here and have him answer on the basis of them. Childermass did not appreciate that. He did not appreciate having a stranger come forward and attempt to use his past ... not against him, he thought. Not so far. But to use it for his own purposes and in answer for his own problems. A man's past was his own. It was not for every passing stranger to make use of.

"Forgive me," Lanchester said softly, reading his thoughts very clearly in his face. Well enough. Childermass was not attempting to hide them. "I am used to knowing things that others do not, and to making use of them when necessary. Normally I would do so with more tact. It is only that I do not have much time, Mr Childermass. My master is impatient. He meant to be about this task himself, in fact. I had to persuade him that it may require ... more delicate handling than is his usual wont. I did not mean to offend you, sir. It is only that I need your help. You have more knowledge of my business, I think, than any other man I might approach hereabouts. I would value your advice in this matter very greatly."

His expression was earnest. Childermass did not think he lied, though he had the sense that the man was skirting very carefully around some truths. Though, to be fair, the situation he was in perhaps warranted that. A delicate matter. Hah. Childermass did feel some sympathy for him, however. He knew all about masters who thought themselves better at their business than they should, and who wished results to materialise at speed whether it was reasonable or not. From the moment Lanchester had sat down, it had been plain that this was not a task he was easy with. Perhaps it did no harm to make allowances.

"... What does your master want from his son?" he asked, leaning back in his seat and drawing his cards from his pocket to shuffle them idly in his hands. He did not draw them, not just yet. It only comforted him to have them there. "It will be important, I think. A man does not like to be imposed upon by a father he has not known existed, after all."

Lanchester, who had eased a little at Childermass' apparent lack of continuing offence, stilled once more. He spread his hands, an uneasy expression on his face. "I'm not entirely sure, to be honest," he admitted. "To ... reward him, I think? To offer him an inheritance, a position. It is ... It has become a complicated matter. His son performed a task for him, without knowing of their relation. A very valuable service indeed, one that involved even the shedding of his blood. His father would thank him, first of all, and I believe he would acknowledge him also."

Childermass slowed his hands around his cards. He fingered a cut in the deck, rubbing the tattered edges of the card that wanted to reveal itself, though he did not look at it. He looked at Lanchester instead, watching the expressions on the man's face.

"The son did not know of their relation," he said thoughtfully. "But the father did, yes?" At Lanchester's expression, he nodded slowly. "For how long? When did he know he had a son? When did he realise who it was?"

Lanchester looked down at the tabletop. His hand reached for his ale, but he did not drink it. There was a wealth of weary acknowledgement in his face. 

"From the moment the boy was born," he said, quietly and very tiredly. "My master has always known his son. He had ... informants. Watchers. He has known his son's course from the moment it began. It is only the son who has never known the father."

Childermass closed his eyes for a second. He laid his head back across his shoulders, and opened them again to gaze into the shadowed recesses of the ceiling beams. His thumb brushed back and forth across the card in his hand.

"What of the mother?" he asked, very calmly and quietly indeed. "Did the boy know his mother? Was he raised by her?"

"Yes," Lanchester said, equally softly. "Yes he was. She would not suffer him to be taken from her. He spent his first years under her tutelage, and I believe learned a great many useful if not entirely salubrious skills in that time. My master's son knew his mother, Mr Childermass. I believe that he loved her, as well. At the very least he has remembered her, and her teachings, even to the present day."

Childermass nodded, his eyes still fixed upon the ceiling. "And your master did not help her?" he asked, soft and cutting as the flick of a knife. "He knew of his son, and left the mother to raise him alone, without aid or respectability to protect her?"

"He would not have let her come to any true harm," Lanchester said. "There were those who watched over her. They were to ensure that she came to no mischief."

"But did he _help_ her?" Childermass asked harshly. "This man you say is powerful, and wealthy enough to offer an inheritance. Did he help the woman he had got with child without a marriage to protect her, or did he not?"

He rocked forward once again, met the man's eyes fiercely and intently across the table. He knew, vaguely, that he was being intemperate. That there were those who would argue it was not his place to judge a stranger this way. He did not care. He remembered his own mother, a thief and a woman of ill-repute, and the dozens of little hands she had taught to take what would never otherwise be given to them. He remembered a woman who had taught him the necessities of survival, because those and the joys of hard-won victories were all she knew, when she had borne him out of wedlock herself and refused to give him up despite it. No. He did not care one jot for his intemperance.

Nor, it seemed, did Lanchester begrudge it. He only looked at Childermass calmly, with a wealth of knowing in his expression that suggested he had known all along that here would be a sticking point. Looking at his face, Childermass understood that Lanchester, at least, had always understood that this would not be a comfortable reunion between father and son, whether or not his master knew the same. 

"You must understand," the man said quietly. "My master was not raised in England, nor has he lived here for many, many years. Customs are different where he comes from. The word 'bastard' does not mean to him as it would to ... well. As it would to you or I. He was raised in another man's house, and gained his inheritance from a man who was not his father. He earned it by right, and none saw any problems with it. And y-- This woman. She was an Englishwoman, but she was also ... She was a free thing. She would not have caught his attention otherwise. She was strong and capable, and there was no doubt that any child of hers would be the same. I do not think it occurred to him that she would need help. She claimed you. She earned you by trial and by right. He would not have contested that, nor interfered with what she had won."

Childermass stared at him. He felt his breath freeze in his chest, and his mind grow blank and empty after it. Lanchester blinked at him. He did not seem to realise what he had said. It took a long, long minute before Childermass could force his tongue to move and point it out to him.

"... She claimed me," he said hollowly, hearing the words fall from his lips as if from a great distance. Realisation dawned in Lanchester's face, with alarm chasing close behind it. Childermass did not care for that. He did not care for a great deal, just this moment. "Who is your master, sir? Who sent you here, Mr Lanchester?"

"Mr Childermass ..." the man started, his careworn face becoming more so even as Childermass looked at him. Childermass cut him off. He did not care to hear prevarications this moment. He sliced a hand through the air, stilling whatever Lanchester might have said, and instead drew the card that had been itching between his fingers for some minutes now. He laid it carefully on the table, face down for the barest of moments while he gathered himself. Lanchester blinked warily at it, but he was not confused. He did not question its purpose. He knew already. Of course he did. He knew all there was to know about John Childermass. Why shouldn't he? His master had apparently been following his life for some time.

After another moment, another deep breath, Childermass turned the card as it lay before him on the battered wood. L'Empereur looked back at him, calm and authoritative as he sat on his throne, and the raven inked above him once more seemed to also stare beadily up at Childermass from the tattered confines of the paper.

"... Lanchester," he said quietly, feeling a seizing in his chest and a sensation all about him, like a great and callous web had caught him in its strands. A spell, cast centuries ago, or perhaps only decades. " _William_ Lanchester, perhaps? By Bird and Book?"

The Raven King's seneschal looked at him mutely, centuries worth of weary sorrow in his gaze. Childermass did not want it. He could not breathe, and he did not _want_ it. He would not have pity. Not for this. Not for anything. His mother had not raised him for pity. Black Joan had known there was no use for it. Mercy, that was worthwhile, and compassion, fellow-feeling, but pity was a thing that 'betters' felt for those beneath them, and Childermass would not have it. In that, he was his mother's son. 

"... Things are done differently in Faerie," Lanchester said at last. "I do not think my king entirely understands how much so. Your mother was ... She did not ask for help. She did not need it. That you grew to the man you are only proves it. You have earned your life, John Childermass, on your own merits and on the strength of what you were taught. That is what matters in Faerie. It was not ... He would not think of it as a test, or a cruelty. He would have stepped in, had either of you ever asked it of him. Neither of you ever did."

No. No, they had not. But then, why would they have? Things were not given in life. They were exchanged, or they were earned, or they were stolen. They were not _given_ just because someone might ask, or only very rarely. They would not have asked for what they had not earned. They had never had a use for pity, his mother and he. Not even from kings. 

Kings. _His_ king. The Raven King. His father ... His father was the _Raven King_. God above. But he could not think of that. Childermass could not wrap his mind around the ramifications of that just yet. Not if he hoped to remain sane.

There was another question, though. An old one, very old. One that Childermass had longed to ask someone, anyone, for a great many years.

"Do you know what happened to her?" he asked softly, in a voice that did not crack. It did not break, though perhaps more because it was still so distant from him than because it did not want to. "My mother. Do you know what became of her? She vanished one day, after I had gone about into the world. No one I met with could tell me where or why she had gone."

His eyes, which had drifted downwards, looked up at the other man again, and he saw a smile now on William of Lanchester's face. Not a large one, nor a mocking one. A small, secretive one, that spoke of a great and happy amusement.

"She did not ask for help," he repeated softly, with that little curve of his lips. "Our king is not accustomed to being ignored with such ... aplomb. Nor is he particularly patient. That winter, when you tried to look for her. It was unusually warm, was it not? The weather was contrary."

Childermass blinked at him. He did not immediately take his meaning, but then he remembered. One of the first sayings he had ever learned. When the weather is contrary, we say that John Uskglass has fallen in love again, and neglects his business.

"He came for her?" he asked carefully. "My ... My father came for her?"

He did not mean to sound so young, so childish. It was only that he had searched for her, on and off for years, whenever he had an opportunity. Not necessarily because he wished to find her, if she did not wish to be found, but only to be sure that nothing had befallen her. And he had never had a father. His voice did not know how to ask such a question otherwise. 

There was pity again, in Lanchester's face. Or perhaps it was only compassion. He smiled as he nodded, with the shadow of amusement still in his eyes.

"If it is any consolation, I believe she yelled at him somewhat as well," he said, with a certain wryness. "On your behalf, rather than her own. A fine time for him to be showing up, when you were a man already and had no need of him. I'm not sure if she had learned yet who he was at that point. If she knew that he was the King. I'm not sure it would have mattered even if she did. He asked her to come to Faerie with him. You were a man then, by Faerie lights, and her duty was done. It was not stealing from her to ask it then, nor from you either. She wavered, but she went. I think she trusted you by then to survive most anything."

Childermass snorted softly. His mother had trusted him for that well before then. He had been a survivor of the first water from the day he was born, even if he was also possessed of a stubborn insolent streak as well. He did not keep his head down very well, but to compensate he had become quick and clever enough to manage most of what it brought him. When he had left her company, headed to Whitby and otherwise out into the world, she had told him that she loved him and to carry his head high. Even then, perhaps they had not really expected to see each again, or at least not soon. They were thieves. They knew how fragile their company might be. They always had.

"She is well, then?" he asked, meeting Lanchester's eyes with a lighter sort of calmness. "She is happy enough?"

Lanchester smiled. "Shall I show you?" he asked, gesturing with one hand towards his ale. It was not quite a silver basin, but magicians could make do at a push. Childermass nodded, trying not to do so as eagerly as he wished. He was not sure if he succeeded, but perhaps it did not matter. Lanchester quartered the liquid in the pewter mug, and Childermass leaned unabashedly forward to see what image might come of it.

The woman sat at a window, inside a great stone embrasure. Her hair was dark still, though streaked with grey. She wore a beautiful gown, deep red and cut of a mediaeval style, and there was a necklace of garnets and jet at her throat and pendants at her ears. Her feet were bare beneath the hem of the gown, though. He could see dirt and mud upon them even against the murk of the ale. She had a battered black briar bowl in her hand, and seemed to be smoking quite cheerfully on it as she looked out over whatever landscape lay beyond the window. She looked sated and content, and not the slightest bit tame. She looked beautiful. All sons think their mothers so, but Childermass dared anyone to say different here. Her name was Black Joan, she was his mother and the lover of the Raven King, and she was beautiful.

"You may see her, if it is your wish," Lanchester told him quietly. "My king would prefer it if you would consent to see him first, but you may see her also. She doesn't ... Ah. She has not yet been informed of this meeting. Or even of his intent to tell you who you are." He grimaced again. "I did warn him that that ... might not be wise, but he would not have it otherwise. He has never been particularly clever when it comes to love. Or family, I suppose, but then he has had little enough of that. Until ... until now."

Until you. It was not said aloud, yet Childermass heard it nonetheless. He looked up, looked away from the image of his mother, happy and content and wearing a lady's gown over a thief's bare feet. William of Lanchester looked back at him. There was that expression about him again, that mixed fondness and exasperation, that weary and uneasy care. He loved his king. Childermass could see that, could understand it very well. He had done so too, when that had been all the man was. A king, a distant figure it had been his life and his pleasure to serve. Yet it was not ... To imagine him as a father was not ...

"What does he wish of me?" Childermass asked his father's seneschal softly. "What does he _want_ , my lord. As my king he may ask for anything, but ..."

He trailed off, shook his head helplessly. He did not know how to finish that. He didn't even know what he meant himself. But. His king might ask for anything, _but_. Why? What right had he to hold anything back? Why did he want to, when he had never wanted anything save to serve his king? And yet. There was a 'but'. He did not know why, but there was. A father was a different thing. A father he had never had, and some part of him did not know if it was a mastery he wished to allow anyone to have over him. Not even his king. He had never needed a father before. He did not know if he wanted one now.

"... He wishes to know you," William said at last, and very gently. "I do not think he entirely understands what he wants himself, but I think that is the base of it. He wants to know his son, _as_ his son. Not as his servant, however brave and valuable a servant he might be. And you have been, John Childermass. That much at least, you must not doubt. The regard in which you are held is not an empty one, based on blood you did not know you carried. You have earned it, in blood you have spilt and battles you have fought. Fairies fight for what they inherit. There is nothing you have not earned, not in either world. Your duty is done. It is not stealing to ask this of you now. I think that is why I am here."

Childermass bent his head, a wry little twist about his lips. He laid his hand across the Emperor card, still laid out on the table between them. "That's just it," he said. "I am a servant, sir. Not a very good one, perhaps, but I am. I do not think I would know how to be a king's son."

A hand touched lightly against his, turned it gently and gripped it with casual strength. Childermass looked up, into the ancient, wry and weary eyes of a man who had loved and served a difficult master for many years. William of Lanchester, seneschal of the Raven King, patted his hand gently and smiled at him.

"Then be John Childermass," he said softly. "Be the man Black Joan raised, the man who has dealt with everything in his life without ever asking for help, the man who has earned his victories regardless. Be John Childermass, meet with your father, and let the rest fall where it will. We have survived some centuries, you know. Your father's court. It may not be easy, but it is reasonably likely that we will survive you as well."

Childermass laughed. He could not help it. He liked this man, he thought. His father's servant. He thought that he and William of Lanchester might have a thing or two in common. A certain aplomb in the pursuit of their duties not least of all.

"You should tell him he was wise to send you first," he said at last. "You are a better diplomat, I think, and I am occasionally an intemperate man. He was wise to trust you first."

"I shall tell him and gladly," William said, with a look in his eyes that said it would not be the first time. And then he added, while Childermass was thus disarmed by amusement and would not see it coming: "Thank you for the compliment, my prince."

... Prince. It was a good thing, Childermass thought distantly, that he was already sitting. Prince. His father was a king. His father was _the_ king. He was the Raven King's son. John Childermass was John bloody Uskglass' bloody bastard, and he'd earned the right to an acknowledgement of it. He was a _prince_.

And maybe it was wickedness, maybe it was a streak of his father in him, but for a moment the only thing he could think of was Henry Lascelles, and what the bastard's face would have looked like had he been told.

It was not a reason to accept the honour. Indeed, it might be a reason _not_ to, and be damned to any and all who thought otherwise. The Raven King had earned his throne, risen from slavery to kingship, and Childermass would not have done less. He had little enough use for inherited titles, for he had enough experience of the kind of men who relied upon them, who used them to bring their enemies down. No, he thought suddenly. Whatever about a king's son, he did not think he should like to be a prince.

"Bugger to that," he said, with a mix of warning and amusement. "I am a servant and a magician, sir, but I am not a prince. Nor shall I be. Whatever else may come of this meeting, I do not think I shall agree to that. You may take this as fair warning. I shall have nothing that I have not earned, and by _my_ lights, not my father's. I fear you may both get used to that."

Lanchester blinked at him, his head cradled in one hand as he leaned heavily on the table. "... Likely, I said," he murmured after a moment. " _Reasonably_ likely. You are your father's son, aren't you? And your mother's as well. I always knew one day his romances would get us in trouble."

Childermass snorted. "Aye, well," he said. "If a man does not want that sort of trouble, then he should keep it in his trousers. Otherwise he deserves everything he gets. You may tell him _that_ from me as well."

Lanchester smiled faintly. "Don't be cruel," he said. "Keep some messages for yourself, John Childermass. You have better right to say them, and to answer for them as well."

Childermass blinked at that, and accepted it. He inclined his head in wry acknowledgement. "My apologies, my lord," he said. "You have been the bearer of enough uncomfortable news, and you are right. It would not be fair to ask you to go between us when I may speak perfectly well for myself." He paused briefly, to let the decision crystallise inside him, and then he nodded to himself. "Shall we go, then? You and I? I have a father to meet, and I understand that he is not the most patient of men. There's no time like the present, I think."

William of Lanchester took his hand from his face, and set it about his tankard instead. "Aye," he said, and drained off the last of his ale in one long, fortifying gulp. "Aye, John Childermass. Let's be about it, then. And Heaven help us all."

Childermass doubted that, somehow. He understood that Heaven was not always on the best of terms with his father, or himself either for that matter. But if all else failed, then he thought that he should help himself, or he should die trying, and perhaps his father no less than him. It was, after all, the way they had lived their lives. That much at least, he and his king had in common. 

'Twas not the worst of things a man might share with his father, all things considered.

**Author's Note:**

> I figured that, Raven King or no Raven King, Childermass would have _opinions_ on deadbeat dads who'd abandon a woman to raise a child out of wedlock alone and in poverty in 18th century rural bloody England. Even before he realised that this was _his_ deadbeat dad. He's his mother's son, after all. I thought this might be a more complicated reunion than John Uskglass might perhaps have anticipated. Fortunately, his seneschal has a slightly better grasp of such things.


End file.
